Welcome to our mobile site.
→ Go to the mobile site[x] Hide this

Climate Depot
  • A project of CFACT
  • DONATE

mStudy: Climate Change Might Lower Salaries


By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotDecember 4, 2017 8:56 PM

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/hot-weather-fetuses/547406/?utm_source=Feed 

Even if countries take moderate action on climate change, by the end of this century, Phoenix is expected to have an extra month of days above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, while Washington, D.C., is expected to have another three weeks of these sweltering days, as the Climate Impact Lab and New York Timesreported.

A new study suggests that even days that are an average of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, or 32 Celsius, might have long-term, negative impacts on developing fetuses. The stress of the hot weather might show up as reduced human capital once those fetuses reach adulthood.

Maya Rossin-Slater, a health-policy professor at Stanford University, said she and her team wanted to understand the long-term consequences of climate change on people. For the study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she and other researchers looked at data on births, weather, and earnings in half the states in the United States. For a given county, on a given day, they measured how many days above 90 degrees a child born that day would have experienced during gestation and during their first year of life. They then compared that person’s salary as an adult to someone born in that same county on that same day in other years.


It turned out fetuses and infants exposed to a single extra 90-plus degree day made $30 less a year, on average, or $430 less over the course of their entire lifetimes. Right now, the average American only experiences one such day a year. (This study looked at the average temperature throughout the entire day, not the highest temperature that day.) By the end of the century, there will be about 43 such days a year.

In addition to birthday and county, the researchers also controlled for gender and race. Rossin-Slater said it is unlikely the difference in earnings could be explained by something other than heat.

“It’s really hard to figure out what else it could be. They set up a really good study design,” said Kathryn Grace, a professor of geography, environment, and society at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the study.

What’s more, the study used data from the 1970s, when more and more people were installing air conditioners in their houses. The researchers found the difference in earnings went away in areas where most people got air conditioners installed.

It’s not entirely clear how hot temperatures would be causing this dip in earnings. Fetuses and infants are especially sensitive to heat because they don’t yet have the ability to self-regulate their body temperatures. Rossin-Slater said there are three potential pathways by which being too hot could impact the fetus: The heat could overstress it, which could affect the child’s health. Heat could also affect how nutrients are delivered to the fetus, or harm its cognitive development, and thus potentially things like focus or self-control.


Nathaniel DeNicola, an obstetrician with George Washington University and an expert on environmental health, said it’s well established that extreme temperatures can affect fetuses, for example by restructuring proteins that are involved in organ formation, and extreme heat raises the risk of preterm birth and low birth weight. Those issues, in turn, can sometimes cause cognitive impairment.

Still, he said, the authors could be missing some other variables that could be contributing to adult salaries, and it’s not clear that adult salaries are a marker of good health. The overall message from the study, to him, should be that “there are clear health risks to extreme heat, and those risks are worse during the critical periods of development.” (In the study, there was no effect on earnings for children older than 12 months either way.)

Women shouldn’t get too worried if they are pregnant and living in a warm area, Rossin-Slater cautioned. The difference in earnings was small, after all, and nothing happened to the air-conditioned babies.

But that also doesn’t mean we should look to AC to solve all our climate-change woes. Air conditioning isn’t free, and people in the developing world—which is hotter—are more likely not to have access to it.

“In poor countries, we can sometimes be like, ‘Oh, it’s food insecurity, it’s drought, it’s not temperature,’” Grace said. “This is a place for us to start thinking about what physical environments do to our health.”

  • Share
  •  

  • Tweet
  •  

  • Comments

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  • Olga Khazan

OLGA KHAZAN is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

  • Twitter
  •  

  • Facebook

Ads by Revcontent

From The Web






28 Heartbreaking Photos North Korea Didn’t Want Released

LifeBuzz News






12 Insanely Cool Gadgets Flying off Shelves (Should #7 Be Banned for Civilians?)

Household Saving Tips






We Can Guess Your Education with Only 10 Questions

Topix






A Canal Was Drained in Paris After 200 Years. Photos Show What They Discovered

NewsD

Personalize This Content

Most Popular



  • A crying baby is examined in a hospital crib.

    Why Is Giving Birth So Hard?


  • Billy Bush seen at The Lollipop Super Hero Walk 2017 benifiting the Lollipop Theatre Network at The Grove shopping center in April of 2017, in Los Angeles.

    Billy Bush, Active Bystander


  • The Odds of Impeachment Are Dropping


  • The Nationalist’s Delusion


  • Top 25 News Photos of 2017


  • President Donald Trump speaks at the Utah State Capitol.

    It’s More Than Just a Monument


  • From left to right: James, Jonathan, and Mary Winnefeld at the University of Denver campus

    No Family Is Safe From This Epidemic


  • People ride yellow stationary bikes in an outdoor SoulCycle class.

    The Consumerist Church of Fitness Classes


  • Bitcoin Is a Delusion That Could Conquer the World


  • Trump’s Food Choices Grow More Disconcerting


  • The Algorithm That Catches Serial Killers


  • The Painful History of a Confederate Monument Tells Itself


  • Perfect Grades Don’t Always Matter

MORE POPULAR STORIES

SHOW COMMENTS

  • Home
  • Share
  • Tweet

Subscribe

Get 10 issues a year and save 65% off the cover price.

Fraud Alert regarding The Atlantic

Newsletters+

Follow+

About+

TheAtlantic.com Copyright (c) 2017 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.



Filed under: astrology, new study, wacky

« Climate Depot home

Recent Articles

  • Watch: Morano on The Kim Iversen Show discussing climate lockdowns & morphing the issue of Covid
  • Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘The UN IPCC Reports have become ‘bumper sticker’ climate science’ – Report lobbies for ‘politically manufactured consensus’
  • Great Water Reset: The UN & WEF are coming for your water now! ‘Sustainable development’ water dictates – Aim to ‘achieve internationally agreed water-related goals’
  • SEC Staff Consulted With Green Financial Firm Accused Of Selling ‘Fictitious’ Carbon Credits
  • Green Dictatorship? Netherlands Politicians Answering to the EU instead of Voters – Despite rejection of agriculture policies in recent elections
  • World’s Biggest Seller of Carbon Offsets Accused of Being a Scam
  • Lawyers Seek To Add Stock Of Lawyer Jokes By Demanding Oil Companies Be Prosecuted For Homicide
  • UN Advisor Sophia Kianni says the quiet part out loud! ‘Remember when we treated COVID-19 like an emergency? Well it’s time to do the same for climate change’
  • ‘Climate Brides’ – Media claims ‘Pakistan’s Climate Crisis of Child Marriage’ Due to Floods – ‘Patriarchal power structures impose disproportionate climate-related harms on women & girls’
  • Your Future Meals Could Come From A 3D Printer ‘to combat climate-related food insecurity’, Researchers Say – ‘Food paste is squeezed through a syringe’ into 3D printer
  • ‘They Offset’: John Kerry Defends Billionaires Flying Private To Davos ‘And they are working harder than most people I know to be able to try to effect this transition’
  • Federal Regulator Acknowledges Danger To Wildlife Caused By Offshore Wind Farms
  • BERLIN’S CLIMATE-NEUTRAL-BY-2030 REFERENDUM FAILS!
  • Report: Wind industry & the gov’t colluding to mislead public about the true cost of wind energy – FOI reveals
  • ‘What must true theologians think’: ‘Pagan’ Greta Thunberg receives theology doctorate
  • Angry Polish miners hold mock Greta Thunberg funeral to protest EU climate policies – Chants of ‘thieves!’ at the EU building
  • Brazilian Gov’t eyes declaring ‘permanent climate emergency’ for over 1,000 cities
  • Wash, blow dry & talk to me about global warming please: Hairdressers trained to talk about ‘climate action’ to customers
  • WaPo: Why climate ‘doomers’ are replacing climate ‘deniers’ – ‘How UN reports & confusing headlines created a generation of people who believe climate change can’t be stopped’
  • Watch: Morano debunks Biden’s ‘science-free’ climate/energy claims point-by-point – On Bongino’s Fox News show: ‘I think it’s easier to transition your gender than it is to transition to green energy’

Archives